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BY 

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Boston 

HAIRENIK PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1918. 






WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

ARMENIA'S RdLE IN THE PRESENT WAR 




DR. G. PASDERMADJIAN 

(Armen Garo) 



WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

ARMENIA'S ROLE IN THE PRESENT WAR 



A 



BY 



DR. G* fASDERMADJIAN 

(ARMEN GARO) 

EX-DEPUTY FROM ERZEROUM IN THE OTTOMAN PARLIAMENT 
FORMER COMMANDER OF THE SECOND BATTALION OF THE ARMENIAN 

VOLUNTEERS ON THE CAUCASIAN FRONT 
REPRESENTATIVE IN AMERICA OF ARMENIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE 

CAUCASUS. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

GEORGE NASMYTH, Ph. D. 

FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL 

FEDERATION OF STUDENTS 

SECRETARY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS JOINT COMMITTEE 

FOR A LEAGUE OF FREE NATIONS 



ILLUSTRATED 



Boston 

HAIRENIK PUBLISHING COMPANY 

1918. 






WRITTEN AT WASHINGTON, D. C. OCTOBER, 1S>18. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published, Herein her, 19 IS 



By Transfer 

APR 14 1923 



The Blanchard Printing- Co. 
Boston Massachusetts. 



TO THOSE WHO WERE MARTYRED 
AND 

TO THOSE WHO DIED ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE 
FOR THE LIBERATION OF ARMENIA 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Introduction 1 

Translator's Preface 5 

Turkish and Russian Proposals to the Armenians in 1914 15 

Military Services Rendered by the Armenians on the Caucasian Front 18 

Armenian Resistance to the Turkish Massacres 24 

Attitude of Russian Czarism Toward the Armenians 28 

Role Played by the Armenians in the Caucasus After the Russian 

Collapse 34 

Armenia's Co-operation with the Allies on Other Fronts 41 

Conclusion 42 



INTRODUCTION 

Armenia has become a touchstone of victory in the great war for free- 
dom and humanity. 

If Armenia is granted national independence it will mean that in 
the making of the peace treaty the forces of democracy and human 
progress have triumphed over the forces of imperialism and short- 
sighted reaction. It will mean that in the future the rights of the small 
nations are to be recognized as well as those of the great. It will mean 
that international justice is to be the foundation of the new world 
order. The triumph of the principle that is involved will mean that 
the war has been won because its moral aims have been achieved. 

But if the Armenians were to be thrust back under the yoke of 
Turkey, it would mean that injustice, massacre and atrocity are to be 
permanent features of the world of the future. It would mean that the 
justice-loving nations of the world will prepare for inevitable conflicts 
that are to come. It would mean that the war which was fought to end 
war has been lost. 

National independence for Armenia will mean that the old order of 
secret intrigue and orthodox diplomacy has given way to a new order 
of open democratic diplomacy, based on the self-determination of nations 
and the principles of international justice. It will mean that the peace 
which ends this war will be a democratic peace, a peace of the peoples, 
a peace that will last. It will mean that imperialistic aims, secret treaties 
and selfish greedy interests have given way before the conception of a 
world organized for righteousness and permanent peace. 

National independence for Armenia will mean that the Balance of 
Power, which has always considered the subject nations of Turkey as 
mere pawns in a diplomatic game, has been replaced by a League of Free 
Nations opening the way towards a world federation and the parliament 
of man. It will mean that the old chaos of international anarchy is to be 
replaced by a new world order in which peoples and nations shall be free 
to live their own lives, to speak their own language, to worship in their 



2 INTRODUCTION 

own religion and to develop their own civilization, in the fullest friend- 
ship and democratic co-operation with the other free nations of man- 
kind. 

National independence for Armenia is a touchstone of victory because 
it will mean that mankind has come to recognize that there is a moral law 
in the world, which applies to nations as well as to individuals. It will 
mean the overthrow of imperialism, militarism and the philosophy of 
force. It will mean an invaluable extension of the principle of democracy 
in the world. It will mean that the way will be open to develop the great 
highway between Europe and Asia amid political conditions of a stable 
and durable peace. It will mean that mankind can proceed to cultivate 
again the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and that once more 
after centuries of desolation this region will become one of the garden 
spots of the earth. 

What should be the boundaries of the new Armenian nation? I have 
before me Stanford's Linguistic Map of Europe, a map based upon the 
most careful scientific research and conscientious scholarship. This map 
shows the area in which the Armenian speaking population is dominant 
as extending to Adana and Alexandretta on the Mediterranean, almost 
to the Black Sea near Trebizond, to Tiflis in the Caucasus Mountains and 
to Lake Urmia near the western boundary of Persia on the East. 

At the edges this Armenian territory shades over into regions occupied 
by Turks and Kurds. In the interest of international justice and per- 
manent peace in the future, the boundaries of the new Armenia ought 
to be extended as far as the Armenian race extends as an important ele- 
ment of the population, because the Armenians have proved their capac- 
ity for self-government even under the almost impossible conditions of 
Turkish misrule, while Turks and Kurds have again and again proved 
incapable of governing themselves, much less of governing others. The 
hope for toleration of racial minorities, which is the indispensable condi- 
tion for peace in areas of mixed population, would be many times 
greater in a government by the Armenians than in a government by 
Turks and Kurds. 

Armenia is a touchstone of victory in this war because, unlike Belgium, 
it lies so far beyond the range of accurate news reports and the limelight 
of public opinion, that it is likely to be overlooked unless a settlement is 
approached in a new spirit of international justice. The horrors of the 



INTRODUCTION 3 

Armenian massacres have been so unendurable that many people have 
had to try to escape from thinking about Armenia in order to keep their 
sanity in the midst of such wholesale horror. But oblivion is no remedy 
for the problem of Armenia and the world of the future will not be safe 
for democracy or for anything else unless Armenia and the problem 
which it represents is permanently solved in the Peace Conference. I do 
not believe that any indemnities or annexations of territories or any im- 
perialistic gain of this war is worth the life of a single American soldier, 
but I do believe that only by giving Armenia its independence, by 
establishing the principle of international justice, of which Armenia is 
a concrete example, and by creating a League of Free Nations as the 
basis of the new world order, will we be enabled to say that the sacrifices 
of these young men shall not have been in vain. Thus Armenia becomes 
the touchstone of victory in this great war for freedom and humanity. 



George Nasmyth. 



Boston, Mass. 
December 12, 1918. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

Dr. Pasdermadjian, the author of this, pamphlet, is a riative of 
Erzeroum, and a member of a family which, both in the past and in the 
present, has been an object of barbarous persecution at the hands of 
the Turks. When the Russians in 1829 captured Erzeroum for the first 
time, 96,000 Armenians, with the encouragement of the Russian govern- 
ment, left that city and the outlying villages with the Russian army, 
and emigrated towards the Caucasus, where they founded three new 
cities, Alexandropol, Akhalkalak, and Akhaltsikh. Only 300 Armenian 
families remained in Erzeroum, refusing to leave their homes, even in 
face of the Turkish despotism. Among these was the Pasdermadjian 
family. 

In 1872 the Turkish government had Khatchatour Pasdermadjian 
killed, simply because he was a well-to-do and influential Armenian, and, 
therefore, undesirable. In 1877 during the Russo-Turkish war, the Pas- 
dermadjian family was subjected to the basest kind of persecution by 
the Turkish government, which still owes the Pasdermadjians 36,000 
Turkish liras ($180,000), the value of a quantity of wheat wrested from 
them by the military authorities. During those same hostilities, taking 
advantage of the war conditions, the Turkish government planned to 
hang Haroutiun Pasdermadjian, on the ground that he was in com- 
munication with the Russian army ; but he was saved through the inter- 
vention of the British consul. When the Russian army occupied 
Erzeroum in 1878, the Pasdermadjians naturally gave a very hospitable 
reception to the two Armenian Generals, Loris Melikoff and Lazareff. 
After learning of the family's history, Loris Melikoff asked Haroutiun 
Pasdermadjian to emigrate to the Caucasus. He promised to bring the 
influence of the Russian government to bear on Turkey and to claim 
the family's extensive real estate and various sums of money which the 
Turkish government owed them. But Haroutiun Pasdermadjian re- 
fused the kind offer, saying that he could not leave the country which 
contained his martyred father's grave. When the Russians, in accord- 
ance with the terms of the Berlin Treaty, were forced to evacuate 



G TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

Erzeroum, the Turks came back and began anew to persecute the Pas- 
dermadjians in every possible way. In 1890 the Armenians of Erzeroum 
made a protest against Turkish despotism, and demanded to have 
the reforms promised in the Berlin Treaty carried out. The first bullet 
fired by the Turkish soldiers during those disturbances was aimed at 
Haroutiun Pasdermadjian; but he was saved through the heroism of a 
group of young Armenians. In the massacres of 1895, the Pasdermad- 
jians were again attacked by an armed Turkish mob, but were saved 
from plunder and murder through the stubborn resistance of all the 
members of the household, including the servants. Afterwards, three 
members of the family, Hovhannes, Tigrane, and Setrak, were im- 
prisoned for a long time as revolutionists. In reality, they were im- 
prisoned simply because they had not allowed themselves to be slaught- 
ered like sheep by the Turkish mob. In February, 1915, when the 
present Turkish government began its organized slaughters to eliminate 
the Armenians from the world, the first victim in Erzeroum was Setrak 
Pasdermadjian. because he was an influential Armenian and had had 
the courage several times to protest against the unlawful acts of the 
government. The remnants of this numerous and ancient Armenian 
family are now scattered throughout Mesopotamia. 

The author of this booklet, Garegin Pasdermadjian. is the son of 
Haroutiun Pasdermadjian and the grand-son of Khatchatour Efendi. 
He was born in 1873, and received his elementary education at the San- 
asarian College of Erzeroum, being one of its first graduates (1891). In 
1894 he went to France and studied agriculture in the college at Nancy, 
intending to return and develop the lands belonging to his family ac- 
cording to the modern agricultural methods of Europe, and in that way 
give a practical lesson to the Armenian peasants. He had hardly begun 
his course when the great massacres of 1895 revolutionized the plans of 
the younger generation of Armenian students. Out of the 26 young 
Armenians at the University of Nancy, four, Sarkis Srentz, Haik Thira- 
kian, Max Zevrouz, and Garegin Pasdermadjian, left their studies and 
returned to participate in the effort at vengeance which the Armenian 
Revolutionary Dashnaktzoutiun (Federation) had decided to organize in 
Constantinople. In 1896. Garegin Pasdermadjian and Haik Thirakian, 
under their assumed names of Armen Garo and Hratch respectively, 
took part in the seizure of the Ottoman Bank. This European institu- 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 7 

tion, with its 154 inmates and 300 million francs ($60,000,000) of capi- 
tal, remained in the hands of the Armenian revolutionists for fourteen 
hours as a pledge that the European ambassadors should immediately 
stop the Armenian massacre in Constantinople and give assurances that 
the reforms guaranteed to the Armenians in the Treaty of Berlin should 
be carried out. On behalf of the six great powers, signatories to the 
Berlin Treaty, the chief interpreter of the Russian embassy, Mr. Maxim- 
off, made a gentleman's agreement with the young Armenian revolu- 
tionists to fulfill their demands. Trusting to Mr. Maximoff's word of 
honor, the Armenians left Constantinople. But immediately after their 
departure, the massacres were resumed with more intensity, while the 
reforms have remained a dead letter to this day. Such were interna- 
tional morals in 1895. 

After these events Garegin Pasdermadjian returned to Europe to 
continue his unfinished studies. Mr. Hanoteau, however, the French 
foreign minister at that time, would not allow the Armenians who had 
been connected with this affair to remain in France, so young Pasder- 
madjian went to Switzerland and studied the natural sciences at the Uni- 
versity of Geneva. In 1900 he completed his course and received the 
degree of Doctor of Science. Unable to return to Turkish Armenia, as 
was his desire, Dr. Pasdermadjian went to the Caucasus and settled at 
Tiflis in 1901. There he opened the first chemical laboratory, for the 
purpose of investigating the rich mines of that region. 

National events, however, prevented him from pursuing his research 
work. Having been a member of the responsible body of the Armenian 
Revolutionary Dashnaktzoutiun (Federation) since 1896, he took part 
in all the movements which aimed to protect the moral and physical 
well being of the Armenian people from Turkish and Russian despotism. 
For example, in 1905, when the Caucasian Tartars, with the approval 
of the Russian government, began to massacre the Armenians in divers 
parts of the Caucasus, Dr. Pasdermadjian became a member of the Com- 
mittee created by the Armenian Revolutionary Dashnaktzoutiun (Fed- 
eration) to organize defence work among the Armenian people. In 
November of the same year, when the Armeno-Tartar hostilities began 
right in Tiflis, under the very nose of the Russian administration, he 
was entrusted with the command of the Armenian volunteers to pro- 
tect Tiflis and its environs. During the seven-day struggle which took 



8 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

place in the streets of Tiflis, 500 Armenian volunteers faced nearly 1400 
armed Tartars, and drove them back with heavy losses. 

The situation in the Caucasus was almost normal, and Dr. Pasdermad- 
jian and his idealistic colleagues were about to resume their main object, 
— to carry arms and ammunition from the Caucasus to the Turkish 
Armenians in order to prepare them for self-defense, — when the Turk- 
ish revolution came in 1908. The Armenians in Erzeroum, as well as 
the party to which he was a member, telegraphed to Dr. Pasdermadjian 
and strongly urged him to become their candidate in the coming elec- 
tions for Representative to the Ottoman Parliament. After seven years 
of professional studies, Dr. Pasdermadjian had been able to create for 
himself in the Caucasus a life fairly prosperous financially. He had just 
secured the right to develop a copper mine, and was about to work it in 
partnership with a large company. His business required that he should 
stay in the Caucasus to continue his successful enterprise, but he yielded 
to the moral pressure of his comrades and left his personal affairs to go 
to Constantinople as a deputy from Erzeroum. 

During his four years in Constantinople as a deputy, Dr. Pasdermad- 
jian devoted his entire time to better the economic conditions of the 
Armenian vilayets, and especially worked for the railroad bill, of which 
he was the real author, but which was known to the public as Chester's 
bill. Its main object was to build railroads as soon as possible in those 
vilayets of Armenia which were considered to be Russia's future posses- 
sions. For that reason neither France nor Germany wished to under- 
take it, lest they should arouse the enmity of Russia. Another funda- 
mental object was to build those lines with American capital, which 
would make it possible to counteract the Russo-Franco-German policies 
and financial intrigues, for the benefit of the Armenian people. But in 
spite of all his efforts, Dr. Pasdermadjian was unable to overcome the 
German opposition in Constantinople, although, as the outcome of the 
struggle in connection with that bill, two ministers of public works 
were forced to resign their post. Both of the ministers were absolute 
German agents under the name of Turkish ministers. It may also be 
worth mentioning that during his four years at Constantinople as a 
deputy from Erzeroum, at three different times, Talaat Bey (who be- 
came the butcher of the Armenian people in 1915), on behalf of the 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 9 

"Committee of Union and Progress," offered the portfolio of public 
works to Dr. Pasdermadjian, as the most competent man for the post. 
Dr. Pasdermadjian, however, refused these proposals, for the simple rea- 
son that he did not wish to compromise in any way with the leaders of 
the Turkish government, as long as they continued their chauvinistic 
and anti-Armenian policy. 

In the parliamentary elections of 1914, the "Committee of Union and 
Progress" used every means to defeat the election of Dr. Pasdermadjian 
in Erzeroum. On account of this attitude of the Turks, all the Arme- 
nian inhabitants of the Erzeroum vilayet refused to take part in the last 
elections. This intense opposition of the Turks to the candidacy of Dr. 
Pasdermadjian was due to the fact that he had taken too active a part 
in 1913 in the conferences held for the consideration of the Armenian 
reforms, and especially because, while parliamentary elections were go- 
ing on in Turkish Armenia during April, 1914, he was in Paris and Hol- 
land, as the delegate of the Armenian Revolutionary Dashnaktzoutiun 
(Federation), to meet the inspectors general who were invited to carry 
out the reforms in Turkish Armenia. 

In the autumn of 1914, a month and a half before the beginning of 
Turco-Russian hostilities, Dr. Pasdermadjian went to the Caucasus on a 
special mission, and joined the committee which had been appointed by 
the Armenian National Council of the Caucasus to organize the Arme- 
nian volunteer movement. In November of the same year, when the 
Russo-Turkish war had begun, he accompanied the second battalion of 
the Armenian volunteers, as the representative of the executive com- 
mittee of Tiflis, to prepare the local inhabitants of Turkish Armenia for 
self-defence, as the Russian army was about to advance into the cap- 
tured territories of that country. On November 14 the second battalion 
of the Armenian volunteers engaged in battle for the first time, near 
Bayazid, with the Turkish soldiers and the Kurds. In the course of a 
bloody combat which lasted twenty-four hours, Dro, the brave com- 
mander of the battalion, was seriously wounded, and Dr. Pasdermadjian 
was forced immediately to take his place. From that day to March of 
the following year, he remained at the head of that battalion, and led 
it into eleven battles in the neighborhood of Alashkert, Toutakh, and 
Malashkert, until Dro recovered and returned to resume the command. 
In the summer of 1915, Dr. Pasdermadjian (again as a representative 



10 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

of the executive committee of Tiflis) went to Van. He was there when 
the people migrated en masse to the Caucasus (when the Russian army 
was forced to retreat to the old Russo-Turkish frontiers) and shared 
their untold hardships. 

In the spring of 1917, when the Russian Revolution turned all the 
defence work of the Caucasus up-side down, Dr. Pasdermadjian, with Dr. 
Zavrieff, was sent from the Caucasus to Petrograd to negotiate with the 
temporary Russian government concerning Caucasian affairs. From 
Petrograd he left for America in June of the same year as the repre- 
sentative of the Armenian National Council of Tiflis and as the special 
Envoy of His Holiness the Catholicos of all the Armenians, to lay before 
the American public and government the sorrows of the Armenian peo- 
ple with the view of winning their sympathy and protection for the in- 
disputable rights of Armenia. He is still acting in that capacity with 
all the energy at his command. His last effort has been the preparation 
of this pamphlet, in which the reader will find a part of these biographi- 
cal facts under his assumed name of Armen Garo. 

A word or two more about this booklet, which has been written in 
the nick of time. 

The critical days in the spring of this year are over, and the complete 
victory of the Allies and of the United States has been won. "The day 
is not very far," in the words of the writer, "when . . . the representa- 
tives of all the nations of the world, — guilty or just, — are to receive 
their punishment or reward . . " It is the purpose of this pamphlet 
to demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt, with most authentic facts, 
that Armenia has fulfilled her duty to the allied cause in full measure 
(and suffered untold sacrifices in doing so), and, therefore, is entitled 
to her just claims as an Independent Armenia. 

One other purpose the writer had in view in writing this booklet: 
to make the great and generous American public realize that Armenians 
are not an anaemic and unaggressive people, with no fighting blood in 
their veins; that the Armenians have not been butchered like sheep, 
but, on the contrary, have fought most bravely and resisted most stub- 
bornly the savage attacks of the Turks whenever they had an oppor- 
tunity. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 11 

If the translation can possibly convey the spirit of the original, the 
sustained eloquence and suppressed emotion with which the author 
pleads the cause of his unfortunate but brave people, should be intensely 
effective because they are not mere words, but are based on actual, real, 
undeniable facts, and are the expression of a soul wholly dedicated to a 
sacred cause. 



A. T. 



Cambridge, Mass. 
December, 1918. 



WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

ARMENIA'S ROLE IN THE PRESENT WAR 



"The interesl of the weakesl is as sacred as the interest 
of the strongesl ." 

President Wilson. 



New York, Sept. 27, L918. 




A seventy-year old Armenian priest leading the volunteers 
to the battlefield. 



WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

ARMENIA'S ROLE IN THE PRESENT WAR 

In the early days of August, 1914, when civilized nations took up arms 
against the German aggression, only three of the smaller nations of 
Europe and the Near East had the courage, from the very first days of 
the war, to stand by the Allies without any bargaining or dickering, and 
they still stand at their posts on the ramparts, in spite of the immense 
sacrifices they have already made. 

The first member of this heroic triad was brave Serbia, which was 
the first victim of Austrian aggression, and whose sons, after four 
years of heroic struggle, are about to regain their lost native land. The 
second member was little Belgium, whose three weeks of heroic re- 
sistance delayed the German advance of 1914 and enabled gallant France 
to crown with success the historic battle of the Marne. The third mem- 
ber of this heroic triad was the Armenian people, who for four years and 
without an organized government or a national army, played the same 
role in the Near East by preventing the Turco-German advance toward 
the interior of Asia as the Belgians played in the West by arresting the 
march of Germany toward Paris. The Armenians, however, paid a higher 
price to the God of War than either the Belgians or the Serbs. Out of 
four and one-quarter millions of Armenians living in Turkey and Rus- 
sia at the beginning of the war, scarcely three millions remain at the 
present time. What were the conditions under which the Armenians 
sided with the Allies, and why were they forced to bear so great a sacri- 
fice for their cause ? 

Turkish and Russian Proposals to the Armenians in 1914. 

In the beginning of this world conflagration, in 1914, both the Rus- 
sian and the Turkish governments officially appealed to various Armeni- 
an national organizations with many promises in order to secure the act- 
ive participation of the Armenians in the military operations against 
each other, the principal stage of which would be Armenia itself. Both 

15 



li; WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

Turkey and Russia were very anxious to win the co-operation of the 
the Armenians, because, judging from their past experience, they were 
convinced that without such co-operation they would not be able to ac- 
complish the much desired military successes on the Armenian plateau. 

With such aims in view, Russia, through Count Varantzoff Dashkoff, 
informed the Armenian National Council (then in existence at Tiflis) 
that it the Armenians would unreservedly give their support to the Rus- 
sian armies during the course of the war, Russia would grant autonomy 
to the six Armenian vilayets. The Russian Armenians, however, 
through bitter experience, knew very well what little practical value 
could be attached to the promises of Russian Czarism. During the 
course of the 19th century at three different times the Russians had 
made similar promises to the Armenians when they waged war with 
Turkey and Persia, and, although the self-sacrificing co-operation of the 
Russian Armenians enabled the Russians to capture the districts of Eliza- 
vetpol, Erivan and Kars in 180G, in 1828, and again in 1878, at the end 
of these wars their flattering promises to the Armenians were 
promptly forgotten. But this time the Armenians thought that Russia 
was not alone; the two great liberal nations of the West, France and 
England, were her Allies. After long and weighty consultation, with 
their hopes pinned on France and England, the Armenians resolved to aid 
the Russian armies in every possible way. 

While Russian diplomacy was in the midst of these diplomatic 
negotiations at Tiflis, during the last days of August, 1914, a Turkish 
mission of twenty-eight members (the object of which was to organize a 
Pan-Islamic and a Pan-Turanian movement among all the races of the 
Near East against Russia and her Allies) left Constantinople for 
Armenia. The leaders of that mission were Omar Nadji Bey, Dr. 
Bahaeddin Shakir, and Lieutenant Hilmy, all of them very influential 
members of the "Committee of Union and Progress." The mission in- 
cluded representatives of all the Eastern races, such as the Kurds, 
Persians. Georgians, Chechens, Lezgies, Circassians, and the Caucasian 
Tartars, but not the Armenians. During those same days the annual 
Congress of the Armenian National Organization was in session at 
Erzeroum. In the name of the Turkish government the above men- 
tioned mission appealed to the Armenian Organization with the follow- 
ing proposition: 



TURKISH AND RUSSIAN PROPOSALS 17 

"If the Armenians, — the Turkish as well as the Russian Armenians — 
would give active co-operation to the Turkish armies, the Turkish gov- 
ernment under a German guarantee would promise to create after the 
war an autonomous Armenia (made up of Russian Armenia and the 
three Turkish vilayets of Erzeroum, Van, and Bitlis) under the 
suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire." 

The Turkish delegates, in order to persuade the Armenians to ac- 
cept this proposal, informed them also that they (the Turks) had 
already won the co-operation of the Georgians and the Tartars, as well 
as the mountaineers of the northern Caucasus, and therefore the non- 
compliance of the Armenians under such circumstances would be very 
stupid and fraught with danger for them on both sides of the boundary 
between Turkey and Russia. In spite of these promises and threats, 
the executive committee of the Dashnaktzoutiun (Federation) informed 
the Turks that the Armenians could not accept the Turkish proposal, and 
on their behalf advised the Turks not to participate in the present war, 
which would be very disastrous to the Turks themselves. The Arme- 
nian members of this parley were the well-known publicist, Mr. E. 
Aknouni, the representative from Van, Mr. A. Vramian, and the direc- 
tor of the Armenian schools in the district of Erzeroum, Mr. Rostom. 
Of these Mr. Aknouni and Mr. Vramian were treacherously killed a few 
months later for their audacious refusal of the Turkish proposals, while 
Mr. Rostom luckily escaped the murderous plots against his life. 

The bold retort of the Armenians to the Turkish proposal mentioned 
above, intensely angered the Turks, and from that very day the ex- 
termination of the Armenians was determined upon by the Turkish 
government. And in reality, arrests and persecutions within the 
Armenian vilayets began in the early part of September, 1914, a month 
and a half before the commencement of the Russo-Turkish war. 
The speed of the persecutions gained greater momentum as the months 
rolled by and tens of villages in different parts of Armenia were sub- 
jected to fire and sword. In the district of Van alone, during February 
and March of 1915, twenty-four villages were razed to their founda- 
tions and their populations put to the sword. Early in April of the same 
year, they attempted the massacre of the inhabitants of the city of Van 
as well, but the Armenians took up arms, and, guided by their brave 
leader, Aram, defended their lives and property for a whole month, until 



18 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

the Armenian volunteers from Erivan with Russian soldiers came to the 
rescue and saved them from the impending doom. This resistance on the 
part of the inhabitants of Van gave the Turkish government a pretext 
to deport in June and July of the same year the entire Armenian popu- 
lation of Turkish Armenia, with the pretended intention of transport- 
ing them to Mesopotamia, but with the actual determination to exter- 
minate them. Out of the million and a half of Armenians deported, 
scarcely 400,000 to 500,000 reached the sandy deserts of Syria and 
Mesopotamia, and most of these were women, old men, and children, 
who were subjected in those desolate regions to the mortal pangs of 
famine. More than a million defenceless Armenians were murdered at 
the hands of Turkish soldiers and Turkish mobs. The gang of robbers, 
headed by Talaat and Enver, resorted to this fiendish means to elimin- 
ate the Armenian question once for all, because the Armenians had had 
the courage to oppose their Pan-Turanian policies. The barbarities of 
Jenghiz Khan and Tamerlane pale in comparison with the savageries 
which were perpetrated against the Turkish Armenians in the summer 
of 1915 during this wholesale massacre organized by the Turkish gov- 
ernment. Mr. Morgenthau, who was the American ambassador at Con- 
stantinople during those frightful months, has proclaimed all these 
atrocities by his authentic pen to the civilized nations. This was the 
price which the Armenian people paid within the boundaries of Turkey 
for refusing to aid the Turco-German policies. 

Now let us see what positive services from a military point of view 
this same martyred people rendered to the allied cause on both sides 
of the Turco-Russian boundary line. 

Military Services Rendered by the Armenians 
on the Caucasian Front 

In order to have an adequate comprehension of the events which 
took place on the Caucasian front, it would be well to bear in mind that 
all the peoples of Trans-Caucasia, including the Armenians, felt great 
enmity toward the government of the Czar, whose treatment of them 
in the past had been very tyrannical and very brutal. For this very rea- 
son, the Turco-German propaganda had easily won the sympathy 
of nearly 3,000,000 Tartars and 2,000,000 Georgians. The dream of the 



MILITARY SERVICES ON THE CAUCASIAN FRONT 19 

Tartars was to join the Ottoman Turks and re-establish the old great 
Tartar Empire, which was to extend from Constantinople to Samarkant, 
including all the lands of the Caucasus and Trans-Caspia, while the 
Georgians, through their alliance with the Turco-Germans, hoped to 
regain their lost independence in the western Caucasus. Only the 
2,000,000 Armenians of the Caucasus were not influenced by the Turco- 
German propaganda, although they hated the Russian despotism as 
much as their neighbors. But, on the other hand, having very close ac- 
quaintance with the psychology of the Turkish race and with their 
ulterior aspirations, the Armenians had the political wisdom and cour- 
age to put aside their petty quarrels with Russian Czarism and throw 
in their lot with the allied cause. 

These were the circumstances under which the mobilization of 1914 
took place in the Caucasus. The Armenian reservists, about 160,000 in 
number, gladly responded to the call, for the simple reason that they 
were to fight the arch enemy of their historic race. Besides the regular 
soldiers, nearly 20,000 volunteers expressed their readiness to take up 
arms against the Turks. The Georgians, on the other hand, answered 
the call very reluctantly, and the Armenian-Georgian relations were 
greatly strained from the very beginning. The attitude of the 
Armenians toward the despotic Russian government was incomprehen- 
sible to the Georgians, who thought that, because the Armenians sided 
with Russia, — the oppressor of all the Caucasian races, — they must be 
unfriendly to the Georgians. Many Georgian young men crossed the 
border from Batoum, went to Trebizond, and prepared bands of volun- 
teers under the leadership of Prince Abashize in order to aid the Turks. 
As to the Tartars, not being subject to call, they assumed the role of 
spectators on the one hand, and on the other used every means to arm 
themselves, impatiently awaiting the arrival of the Turks. The great 
land-owners of the provinces of Erivan, Elizavetpol, and Baku began to 
accumulate enormous stores, and prepare a huge reserve of sugar and 
wheat. The price of one rifle, which was 100 rubles ($50), rose 
to 1500 rubles ($750). Through Persia, the Germans took to the 
Caucasus great sums of money in order to push forward the task of 
arming the Tartars from the very first days of the war. Great num- 
bers of young Tartars went to Persia and joined the Turkish armies. 
And all this was carried on in broad daylight under the very eyes of 
the short-sighted Russian bureaucracy. 



20 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

The Russian administration of the Caucasus was more concerned with 
the Armenian "danger" and had no time to pay attention to the 
Georgians and the Tartars. Was it not a fact that officially no Georg- 
ian or Tartar question was placed on the diplomatic table, whereas the 
Armenian question was there ? And for that very reason, before the com- 
mencement of the Russo-Turkish hostilities, the second and third army 
corps of the Caucasian army, the majority of which were Armenians, 
were transferred to the German front and were replaced by Russian 
army corps. Moreover, out of the 20,000 Armenian volunteers who re- 
sponded to the call, only 7,000 were given arms; the authorities ob- 
jected that they had no rifles ready, while a few months later the same 
administration distributed 24,000 rifles to the Kurds in Persia and in 
the district of Van. It is needless to say that all the Armenian of- 
ficers and generals were transferred to the Western front ; only one 
Armenian general was left as a specimen on the entire Caucasian front, 
General Nazarbekoff, and he was transferred to Persia, away from the 
Armenian border. Under these trying conditions commenced the Rus- 
so-Turkish war and the Armenian-Russian co-operation on the Cau- 
casian front in the autumn of 1914. But, in spite of this suspicious and 
crafty attitude assumed by the Russian administration, the Armenian 
inhabitants of the Caucasus spared nothing in their power for the suc- 
cess of the Russian armies. In the three main unsuccessful Turkish of- 
fensives the battalions of Armenian volunteers played a great role. Let 
us now see just what took place during those offensives. 

The first serious Turkish offensive took place in the beginning of De- 
cember, 1914, when Enver Pasha attempted to reach Tiflis by shattering 
the right wing of the Russian army. The Turkish "Napoleon" was 
anxious to connect his name with that great victory which seemed 
certain to his puny brain. And with that very purpose in view he 
boarded Goeben, the German cruiser, and left Constantinople, amid 
great demonstrations. He reached Erzeroum in three days, thanks to 
the German automobiles which were ready for him at different stops 
between Trebizond and the frontier. The offensive was planned with 
great care, and had great chances of success if all the three wings of 
the Turkish army had reached their objectives on time. Enver had un- 
der his command three army corps — the ninth, the tenth, and the 




Keri 



Vartan 



Hamazasp 



Commanders of Armenian volunteers; Keri, of the 4th battalion; 

Hamazasp, of the 3rd battalion, and Vartan, of the 

regiment of Ararat. 



MILITARY SERVICES ON THE CAUCASIAN FRONT 21 

eleventh. The ninth army corps was to advance toward Ardahan by 
way of Olti and from there to march on Tiflis by way of Akhalkalag, 
when it should receive word that the tenth army corps had already cap- 
tured Sarikamish and cut off the retreat of the Russian army of 60,000 
men ; while the eleventh army corps was to attack the centre of the Rus- 
sian army near the frontier. The ninth army corps, in three days and 
without difficulty, reached Ardahan, where the local Moslem inhabitants 
assisted it in every possible way. The tenth army corps, during its 
march from Olti to Sarikamish, suffered a delay of twenty-four hours 
in the Barduz Pass, due to the heroic resistance of the fourth battalion 
of the Armenian volunteers which made up the Russian reserve. This 
delay of twenty-four hours enabled the Russians to concentrate a suf- 
ficient force around Sarikamish (which had been left entirely unde- 
fended) and thereby force back the ninth corps of the Turkish army. 
The Turks were so certain of the success of their plan that they had no 
transports with them and no extra supply of provisions. Opposite 
Sarikamish, where a battle was waged for three days and three nights, 
the Turks suffered a loss of 30,000 men, mostly due to cold rather than 
to the Russian arms. But if the Turkish army corps had reached Sari- 
kamish twenty-four hours earlier, as was expected, it would have con- 
fronted only one battalion of Russian reserves, and that without artil- 
lery. This was the invaluable service rendered to the Russian army 
by the fourth battalion of the Armenian volunteers under the com- 
mand of the matchless Keri. Six hundred Armenian veterans fell in 
the Barduz Pass, and at such a high price saved the 60,000 Russians 
from being taken prisoners by the Turks. This great service of the 
Armenians to the Russian army was announced at the time by 
Enver Pasha himself, when he returned to Constantinople immediately 
after his defeat. From that time on the government at Constantinople 
laid the blame of its defeat at the door of the Armenians, as a pre- 
liminary step in its preparation for the execution of its already-planned 
massacres of the Armenian people. 

After their defeat at Sarikamish, the Turks attempted in April of 
1915 to turn the extreme left wing of the Russian army by marching to 
Joulfa through Persia, and from there (in case of success) moving 
on to Baku, with the hope that the Tartar inhabitants of the eastern 
Caucasus would immediately join them and enable them to cut the only 



22 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

communicating line of railroad of the Russians, and thereby force the 
entire Russian army to retreat toward the northern Caucasus. The 
work of the intelligence department of the Turks was very well organ- 
ized, especially as the Tartar and Georgian officers of the Caucasus rend- 
ered them invaluable services. The Turks knew very well that the Rus- 
sians in Persia at that time had only one brigade of Russian troops un. 
der the command of the Armenian General Nazarbekoff and one bat- 
talion of Armenian volunteers scattered throughout Salmast and Urmia, 
while their own army was made up of one regular and well-drilled divi- 
sion of troops (sent especially from Constantinople) under the command 
of Khalil Bey and nearly 10,000 Kurds. Khalil Bey with his superior 
forces captured the city of Urmia in a few hours (taking prisoners nearly 
a thousand Russians) and victoriously marched on Salmast. Here took 
place one of the fiercest battles between the Armenians and the Turks. 
The first battalion of the Armenian volunteers, under the command of 
the veteran Andranik, strongly enforced in its trenches, repulsed the 
attacks of Khalil Bey for three days continuously, until the Russians, 
with the newly-arrived forces from the Caucasus, were able to put to 
flight the army of Khalil Bey. Thirty-six hundred Turkish soldiers lay 
dead before the Armenian trenches in the course of those three days. 

In that very month of April, while Khalil Bey was confidently attempt- 
ing, as we have seen, to surround the left wing of the Russian army in 
Persia, over in Van the Armenians had taken up arms in self-defence, 
and for one whole month were fighting another division of Turkish 
troops and thousands of Kurds until the first days of May, when three 
other battalions of Armenian volunteers, under the command of General 
Nikolaeff, came to the rescue, riding a distance of 250 kilometers (155 
miles) — from Erivan to Van — in ten days. For one who is acquainted 
with the local conditions, it is an undisputed fact that if the Armenians 
of Van in April, 1915, by their heroic resistance had not kept busy that 
one division of regular Turkish troops and thousands of Kurds, and had 
made it possible for them to join the army of Khalil Bey, the Turks 
undoubtedly would have been able to crush the Russian forces in Persia 
and reach Baku in a few weeks, for the simple reason that from the 
banks of the Araxes to Baku the Russians had no forces at all, while the 
local Tartar inhabitants, armed and ready, were awaiting the coming 
of the Turks before rising en masse to join them. From the very be- 




Andranik 
The commander of the first battalion of Armenian Volunteers 



MILITARY SERVICES ON THE CAUCASIAN FRONT 23 

ginning of the war, Baku has been the real objective of the Turks, just 
as Paris has been the objective of the Germans, and that for two rea- 
sons : first, as a fountain of wealth, the Turks knew very well that the 
Russian government received from the oil wells of Baku an annual in- 
come of more than 200,000,000 rubles ($100,000,000), a sum which 
is more than all the revenues of the bankrupt Turkish government put 
together, and they looked upon these financial resources as in- 
dispensable for the accomplishment of their plan of a Pan-Turanian Em- 
pire; second, because the very plan of their Pan-Turanism had been in- 
troduced in Constantinople after 1908 by these very Tartars of Baku. 
The commanders of the Turkish forces engaged in Persia and Van — 
Khalil and Jevded — understood very well why their plans failed in the 
month of April, 1915 ; and that failure is the explanation of those fright- 
ful massacres which took place on the plains of Bitlis and Moush in June 
of the same year, when the armies of the same Khalil and Jevded, de- 
feated in Persia and Van, were forced to retreat under the pressure of 
the Armenian volunteers. 

The third Turkish offensive took place early in July, 1915. This 
time the Turks, with all their available forces — eleven divisions of regu- 
lar troops, again under the command of Khalil Bey — attacked the very 
center of the Caucasian army. In a few days they re-occupied Malash- 
kert, Toutakh, and the greater part of the plains of Alashkert. Dur- 
ing one week the center of the Russian army retreated more than 100 
kilometers (62 miles) leaving behind the district of Van entirely unpro- 
tected, and in danger of being surrounded at any moment. If the Turks 
had had one or two more divisions of troops at their service in those days, 
they would have been able very easily to take prisoners the entire fourth 
army of the Russian left wing and cut off their way of retreat. In 
order to escape from this dangerous situation, the Russian left wing 
was forced to retreat hastily toward the Russian frontier and sent a 
part of its forces to aid the central army. Only at the end of July did 
the Russian army, having received aid from its left wing, and under 
the leadership of the Armenian General Nazarbekoff, succeed in forc- 
ing back the Turks to their former line. These were the conditions 
under which nearly 150,000 Armenian inhabitants of the district of Van 
were compelled to leave all their property at the mercy of the enemy's 
fire and flee toward Erivan. 



24 why armenia should be free 

Armenian Resistance to the Turkish Massacres 

It is true that the battalions of Armenian volunteers took no active 
part in the battles of July, for they were then in the district of Van and 
undertaking the heavy duty of rear guard work for the Russian army 
and the Armenian refugees. But the Turkish Armenians behind the 
front, who were being deported and massacred as early as the month 
of July, by their heroic resistance, occupied the attention of four Turk- 
ish divisions and tens of thousands of Kurds just at the time when the 
Turks had such great need of those forces to aid them in their July 
drive. It is worth while, therefore, to point out here that, during the 
deportations and massacres of 1915, whenever the Armenians had any 
possible means at all of resisting the criminal plans of the Turkish 
government, they took up arms and organized resistance in different 
parts of Armenia. 

Even before the deportations had begun, toward the latter part of 
1914, the Turkish government cunningly attempted to disarm the 
Zeitunians, the brave Armenian mountaineers of Cilicia, who had taken 
up arms against the Turkish government at three different times in the 
nineteenth century, and each time had laid down their arms only on the 
intervention of the European powers, believing that they would put an 
end to the Turkish barbarities. This time the government filled the 
prisons with the prominent Zeitunians and persuaded the young war- 
riors to surrender, promising to set them free if they did so. After ac- 
complishing its deceitful plan, the government put to death most of the 
young men, deported the inhabitants, and made the mouhajirs from 
Balkans inhabit Zeitun, even changing the name of the place to 
Soulaymania, in order to erase the memory of those brave mountaineers. 
A group of warriors, however, found means to take up their arms, climb 
the mountains, and fight the Turkish soldiers. They are still free, and 
live among the mountains of Giaur Dagh. In the following year the 
inhabitants of Suediah were the first to defend themselves against the 
Turks. In April, when the Turkish government ordered the Armenian 
peasants of Suediah to leave their homes and emigrate toward Der-El- 
Zor, the inhabitants of four or five villages, nearly 5,000 in number, re- 
fused to obey this unlawful order of the Turkish government. With 
their families they climbed the Amanos mountains and for forty-two 




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ARMENIAN RESISTANCE TO THE TURKISH MASSACRES 25 

days heroically resisted the cannonading of the regular Turkish forces. 
Their situation was of course critical. The desperate villagers sewed a 
large red cross on a white sheet to inform the fleet of the Allies in the 
Mediterranean that they were in danger. The French cruiser, Guechene, 
got in touch with the Armenian peasants, informed its war department 
of the situation, and obtained permission to remove them by transports 
to Port Said (Egypt) . Most of them are still there, cared for by the Brit- 
ish, while the young warriors went to join the French Oriental Legion, 
and fought on the Palestine front under General Allenby. 

The resistance at Van has already been spoken of. The next place of 
importance must be given to the brave mountainous district of Sasoun, 
that very Sasoun which had retained its semi-independent position in 
Turkish Armenia up to the beginning of the last century, and had taken 
up arms at three different times in the present generation to defend 
its independence against the Ottoman troops — in 1894, in 1904, and again 
in 1915. This last time, toward the end of June, when the troops of 
Khalil and Jevded began to lay waste with fire and sword the city of 
Moush and the unprotected villages of the outlying district, the gallant 
Sasounians, under the guidance of their two idealistic leaders, came 
dcwn from their mountains and made several raids on the city to drive 
away the Turks. One of their leaders was Roupen, a self-sacrificing and 
highly educated young man who had received his university training in 
Geneva, Switzerland, and had shouldered his gun in 1904 and 
had dedicated himself to the task of defending Sasoun. The name of 
the other was Vahan Papazian (a native of Van, but educated in Rus- 
sian universities) , who had been elected representative from Van to the 
Ottoman parliament. This daring step on the part of Sasoun forced the 
Turkish commanders to march on Sasoun with two divisions of troops 
and with nearly 30,000 Kurds. From the first days of July to Sept. 8, 
the Sasounians were able to resist the Turco-Kurdish attacks, always 
with the hope that the Russian army would come to their assistance. 
During that interval of time, the Sasounians sent several couriers to the 
Russian army and asked for help, but the Russian commanders re- 
mained indifferent, in spite of the fact that the extreme front line of the 
Russian army was scarcely 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Sasoun, 
and the sound of the Turkish artillery aimed at the Sasounians could be 
heard very distinctly by the Russian army. One of the commanders 



26 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

of the Armenian volunteers, Dro, appealed to the Russian commander 
and asked for one battery of cannon and a score or two of machine 
guns, which would have enabled his men to break the Turkish front and 
join the Sasounians. That request likewise was refused by the heart- 
less commanders of despotic Russia. These were the conditions under 
which fell the historic Verdun of Armenia, heroic little Sasoun 
which, with its 10,000 mountaineers, succeeded in facing 50,000 Turks 
and Kurds for two months, with antiquated weapons and without ade- 
quate food or ammunition. 

Making all due allowance for the relative magnitude and impor- 
tance of the Near Eastern and the Western fronts, we may safely say 
without exaggeration that Van and Sasoun, on the Caucasian front in 
the year 1915, played exactly the same role which Liege played in 1914 
and Verdun in 1916 on the Western front. Had it not been for these 
two points of stubborn resistance against the Turkish troops in the 
summer of 1915, the two Turkish offensives, already spoken of, would 
have had great chances of success. This is an undisputed fact 
with all the inhabitants of the Near East. And indeed, three months 
after these events, when the Armenian volunteers together with the 
Russian troops recommenced their drive and captured the cities of 
Moush and Bitlis, in the diary of a Turkish officer, who was taken pris- 
oner in Bitlis, was found the following item, which appeared at the time 
in the Russian press : 

"We are asked why we massacre the Armenians. The reason is 
quite plain to me. Had not the Armenians fought against us, we should 
have reached Tiflis and Baku long ago." 

In addition to Van and Sasoun, during the same July when deporta- 
tions and organized massacres were going on, three other places might 
be mentioned where hopeless attempts at resistance were made by the 
Armenians against the savage Turks and Kurds. These places were 
Sivas, Urfa, and Shabin-Karahissar. At Sivas the heroic resistance of 
Mourat and his comrades and their escape were so full of thrilling 
events that they have been likened to the adventures of Odysseus. 
Mourat is a brave warrior who, together with his companion, Sepouh, 
had fought at Sasoun, in 1904, and had taken part in the Armenian and 
Tartar clashes of 1905 and 1906 in the Caucasus. When deportations 




Dro 

The commander of the second battalion of Armenian 
volunteers. 



ARMENIAN RESISTANCE TO THE TURKISH MASSACRES 27 

and massacres commenced in 1915, Turkish gendarmes were sent to 
capture Mourat, who was living with his wife and child in a village near 
Sivas. Realizing the coming danger, Mourat climbed the mountains 
with his band of warriors and resisted the raids of the enemy. After 
a year and a half of stubborn resistance, he descended one day to the 
shore of the Black Sea, captured a Turkish sail-boat near Samsoun, and, 
putting his comrades into it, ordered the Turkish sailor to steer the boat 
toward Batoum, a Russian port. According to cable messages, Mourat 
was chased by a Turkish gun-boat. Several battles took place in which 
he lost a few of his men, but finally repulsed the Turks and reached 
Batoum safe and sound. At Urfa the Armenians were able for forty days 
to repulse the attacks of one Turkish division, but finally fell heroically 
under the fire of Turkish artillery, commanded by German officers, hav- 
ing previously destroyed all their property so that it would not fall into 
the hands of their enemies. In the ruined Armenian trenches at Urfa, 
by the side of Armenian young men there had fallen dead also Armenian 
young women who, arms in hand, were found all mangled by the Ger- 
man bombs. At Shabin-Karahissar, nearly 5,000 Armenians, for twenty- 
seven days without interruption, in the same month of July, kept busy 
another division of Turkish troops with their artillery. There took 
place one of the most tragic and heroic episodes of the present war. 
When the ammunition of the Armenians was almost gone, on the last 
day of the struggle, nearly 3,000 Armenian women and girls drank 
poison and died in order not to fall alive into the hands of the savage 
Turks. If the supply of poison had not given out, all the women would 
have done likewise. An eye-witness, one who had taken part in the 
struggle and who succeeded in reaching the Caucasus in 1916, after 
wandering in the mountains and valleys of Armenia for a whole year, 
related how on that last day Armenian mothers and girls, with tears 
in their eyes and with hymns on their lips, received poison from the 
Armenian physicians and apothecaries for themselves and their little 
ones. When the supply of poison gave out, those who were unable to 
obtain any uttered terrible wailing, and many of the girls cast themselves 
down from the rocks of the Karahissar citadel and committed suicide. 

These events reveal the following facts : first, that in spite of all the 
precautions which the Turkish government employed to disarm 
the Armenians before carrying out its fiendish design, the Armenians 



28 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

found means to organize in the four corners of Armenia hopeless but 
serious plans of resistance against the swords of their enemy; second, 
that in order to eliminate these Armenian points of resistance during 
the summer of 1915, five Turkish divisions and tens of thousands of 
Kurds were kept employed, and were unable to add their immediate co- 
operation in those very days to the other Turkish forces engaged in 
their two offensives on the Caucasian front. These were the positive 
services which the martyred Armenian people rendered to the allied 
cause in the Near East. Their active resistance to the Turco-German 
plans, however, cost the Armenians more than one million men mas- 
sacred under the most savage conditions, and the deprivation of their 
means of livelihood in Turkish Armenia. But, to complete the descrip- 
tion of the Armenian Calvary, it is necessary to picture also in a few 
words the attitude assumed by the government of the Russian Czar 
toward the very Armenian people whose active participation on Russia's 
side enabled the Caucasian front to repulse the Turkish attacks in 1914 
and 1915, and, moreover, to accomplish definite successes during the fol- 
lowing year, 1916. 

Attitude of Russian Czarism toward the Armenians 

As we have already mentioned, from the beginning of the war the 
Russian bureaucracy tried on the one hand by various false promises 
to win over the sympathy of the Armenians, while on the other it 
tried by every means to keep the Armenian military forces away from 
the Caucasian front. Only seven battalions of Armenian volunteers 
were kept on the Caucasian front. As we have already seen, those few 
battalions even, in 1914 and 1915, rendered to the Russians invaluable 
services, twice saving the right and left wings of the Russian 
army from an unavoidable catastrophe by their heroic resistance; but 
the Russian official communiques do not contain one line in which 
the battalions of Armenian volunteers are even mentioned. 
The same silence was maintained by the Russian communiques concern- 
ing the heroic resistance of the Armenians at Van, and with regard to 
the assistance which the Armenian volunteers rushed to that city. This 
was the policy of the government of Russian Czarism from the begin- 
ning of the war to the end of its existence, — to avoid in every way 




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ATTITUDE OF RUSSIAN CZARISM 29 

speaking about the Armenians and Armenia. The Russian press was 
even forbidden to speak about the massacres carried on in Turkish 
Armenia at the hands of the Turkish government. Therefore, when 
the capture of Erzeroum in 1916 made the immediate co-operation of 
the Armenian volunteers unnecessary to the Russians, the commander- 
in-chief of the Caucasian army at the time, Grand Duke Nicolas 
Nicolaevitch, ordered the disbanding of all the battalions of the 
Armenian volunteers. Besides this amazing treatment of the Armenian 
military forces, the Czar's government removed from the Caucasus be- 
fore the war all the Armenian officers and replaced them by generals 
(manifestly anti-Armenian in spirit) from the Russians, Georgians, and 
other Caucasian races. The object of this move was to enable the 
government to check the national aspirations of the Armenians, 
and to give it a plausible opportunity at the end of the war to take 
over the Armenian vilayets without gratifying the demands of the 
Armenians for autonomy. 

From the third month of the war, it became clear to us that the 
Russian government pursued unswervingly its Lobanoff-policy toward 
the Armenians. What was that policy ? In 1896, when an English cor- 
respondent interviewed the Russian minister of foreign affairs, Count 
Lobanoff Rostowsky, and asked him why Russia did not occupy the 
Armenian vilayets of Turkey in order to save that Christian people from 
the Turkish massacres, the Russian minister cynically replied : "We need 
Armenia, but without the Armenians." It is worth while, then, to give 
here a few actual facts which reveal this fiendish policy pursued by the 
Russian government toward a people which was the only one of all the 
peoples of the Caucasus and the Near East to help the Russian army by 
its unreserved co-operation, and which was the only factor that saved 
the Caucasian front from an unavoidable catastrophe in 1914 and 1915. 

One. Every time that the Russian army was forced to retreat from 
the recaptured parts of Turkish Armenia, no precautionary measures 
were taken in order to save the local Armenian inhabitants from 
the inevitable massacres. For example, in December, 1914, when the 
Turks advanced as far as Sarikamish and Ardahan and forced the cen- 
tral Russian army to retreat from the neighborhood of Alashkert and 
Bayazid, the commander of the local forces, General Abatzieff (an 
Acetine Moslem who had joined the Greek church) strictly ordered the 



30 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

local Armenian inhabitants, nearly 32,000 in number, not to stir from 
their places, and in order to have his command accurately carried out 
he placed mounted Cossack patrols in the plains of Alashkert lest the 
Armenian peasants should emigrate toward the Russian frontier, in 
which direction the Russian army with its transports had already been 
moving since December 13. Three days later the second battalion of 
the Armenian volunteers, which had been fighting in the first-line posi- 
tions for over two months under the command of the same general, 
returned to the army headquarters for a well-earned rest, and there 
only it heard about the serious happenings already mentioned, and the 
extraordinary attitude assumed by the Russian general. The Armenian 
peasants from every side appealed to the Armenian volunteers with 
tears in their eyes and begged to be saved from an inevitable massacre. 
The commander of the Armenian volunteers, Armen Garo, and his brave 
assistant, Khetcho, who died like a hero in July, 1915, on the shores of 
Lake Van, went immediately to General Abatzieff and asked him to re- 
voke his order and permit the Armenian inhabitants to move with the 
army toward Igdir. The hostile general refused their request, his 
answer being that, if the people stirred from the place, he would be 
unable to remove the army transports soon enough. When he heard 
this answer, Armen Garo immediately telegraphed to Igdir and ap- 
pealed to the commander-in-chief of the fourth army, General Oganow- 
sky, and in touching words asked for his intervention. On the following 
day only, thanks to the intervention of General Oganowsky, the Arme- 
nian volunteers received permission to organize the retreat of the 
Armenian inhabitants of the plains of Alashkert toward Igdir and to de- 
fend them from the attacks of the Kurds. During the seven days that 
the retreat lasted the Armenians lost only 400 persons, and most of 
those on account of the severe cold. Another example of this hostile 
treatment of the Armenians by the Russian authorities might be men- 
tioned, — the retreat from the Van district in July, 1915. There General 
Nikolaeff for eight continuous days deceived the Armenian leaders and 
made them remain idle (telling them every day that he would not re- 
treat under any circumstances, and that therefore it was entirely need- 
less to remove the people), until behold, one day, July 18, he suddenly 
sent for the mayor of Van, Aram, and the commander-in-chief of the 
Armenian volunteers, Vartan, and informed them that he had received 




Khetcho 

The commander of the cavalry corps of the Armenian 
volunteers, who was killed in July, 1915, near Bitlis. 



ATTITUDE OF RUSSIAN CZARISM 31 

orders to retreat immediately, but in order to make it possible for the 
people to prepare for departure, he would wait until the 20th of the 
month. Thus the Armenian leaders were forced to remove in two or 
three days nearly 150,000 people of the Van region, and if those three 
battalions of Armenian volunteers had not been there to protect the 
people from Kurdish and Turkish raids, the loss of life during the 
journey would have been tenfold more than it actually was. Whereas, 
if the Russian general had not been so deceitful in his behavior but had 
given an opportunity of seven or eight days to organize the retreat, it 
would have been possible to direct the people to Erivan without the loss 
of a single life. The Armenians suffered a loss of 8,000 to 10,000 men, 
women, and children during the retreat. 

Two. When Turkish Armenia was almost wholly emptied of its 
Armenian inhabitants, due to these successive retreats, the Russian 
government raised all sorts of barriers before the refugees to prevent 
them from returning to their former homes when the Russian army re- 
captured the Armenian vilayets. For example, in 1916-1917, scarcely 
8,000 to 10,000 Armenians were permitted to go back and inhabit the 
region of Van; the rest were compelled to stay within the borders of 
the Caucasus as refugees. Toward the latter part of 1916, even among 
Russian governmental circles there was talk of transferring to Siberia 
nearly 250,000 Turkish Armenian immigrants who had sought refuge 
in the Caucasus, because it was objected that no available lands existed 
there for them. Russians considered it a settled question that even 
after the war the Turkish Armenians would not be permitted to return 
to their own homes. 

On the other hand, the same Russian bureaucracy resorted to every 
means to win the sympathy of the Turkish and Kurdish inhabitants re- 
maining in Armenia. With that purpose in view, in the spring of 1916, 
on behalf of the ministry for foreign affairs at Petrograd, Count 
Chakhowsky with his own organization established himself in Bashkale 
(a city in the district of Van) and distributed nearly 24,000 rifles to the 
Kurds of the neighboring regions. It is needless to say that not long 
after those very rifles were used by the Kurds against the Russian army 
both in Persia and Armenia. This amazing action of Count Chakhow- 
sky was taken so openly that it was even known to ordinary Rus- 
sian soldiers, who were extremely enraged against the Count, a fact 



32 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

which accounts for the murder of the same Count Chakhowsky in Persia 
by Russian soldiers, when the discipline of the Russian army was re- 
laxed on account of the revolution which took place in the spring of 1917. 

Three. While the Russians were preventing the Turkish Armenian 
immigrants from returning to their own lands, they, in the spring of 
1916, commenced to organize in Turkish Armenia colonies of Cossacks. 
The Russian administration sent special propagandists to the northern 
Caucasus to persuade the Cossacks living there to move to Armenia, and 
during that same year 5,000 of them, under the name of agricultural 
battalions, were already cultivating the plains of Alashkert, lands which 
rightly belonged to the Armenians. This last act of the Russian gov- 
ernment was so revolting that even the liberal organs of the Russian 
press complained of the government for such inhuman proceedings, 
while in the Russian Duma two Russian representatives, N. Milukoff 
and A. Kerensky (both of whom played such great roles the following 
year in the downfall of Czarism) , publicly criticised the government of 
the Czar for its base treatment of the Armenians. Documentary evi- 
dence relating to this disgraceful action of the Russian government, 
which incensed the ire of prominent liberals in the Duma, may be found 
in the July 28, 1916, issue of the Retch, the organ of the Constitutional 
Democrats in Russia. In order to characterize this criminal action of 
the Russian bureaucracy against the Armenian people who were mar- 
tyred for the allied cause, it may be worth while also to cite the follow- 
ing details : 

In the month of July, 1915, the Armenian inhabitants of Erzeroum, 
nearly 25,000 in number, were likewise deported by the Turkish 
government, leaving all their real and personal property at the 
disposal of the Turks. The governor of the place, Tahsin Bey, ar- 
ranged a scheme by means of which every Armenian before leaving the 
city could store his goods and household furniture (with the name 
of the owner on each article) in the cathedral, with the apparent pur- 
pose of returning them to their owners after the war, but with the 
real purpose of preventing so much riches from falling into the hands 
of the Turkish mob, in order to appropriate them later for the govern- 
ment. The cathedral of Erzeroum was packed with the goods of the 
exiled Armenians when the Russians captured the city in February, 
1916. Ordinary human decency demanded that the Russians should not 



ATTITUDE OF RUSSIAN CZARISM 33 

have touched the articles stored in that sacred edifice, especially as 
they belonged to the very martyred people whose professed sympathies 
for them (the Russians) were the cause of their being exiled to the 
deserts of Mesopotamia. But the fact is that the commander of the 
Russian army, General Kaledine himself, set the example of desecration ; 
he personally entered the cathedral first, and selected for himself a 
few car-loads of rugs and sundry valuable articles. Then the other of- 
ficers of the Russian army followed his example, and in a few days half 
of the contents of the church was already pillaged before the representa- 
tive of the Armenian Committee, Mr. Rostom, after repeated tele- 
grams, was able to receive an order from Tiflis to stop the plunder. In 
that same summer of 1916, the Buxton brothers (representatives of the 
Armenian Committee of London) and other English Armenophiles 
came to Armenia. When they witnessed all these disgraceful particulars 
they could not believe their own eyes, so monstrous was the attitude of 
the Russian government toward the Armenians. The English and 
American friends of Armenia consoled them by saying that on their 
return they would have the privilege of explaining this state of affairs 
to their government and that they would doubtless do all in their power 
to protect the rights of the Armenians. These were the circumstances 
under which the Armenian people joined its fate to the allied cause from 
the very beginning of the war, and, having made colossal sacrifices dur- 
ing three whole years, was almost crushed to death in the claws of 
Turkish and Russian despotism. 

In that same sorrowful summer of 1916 the Armenians heard the news 
that England, France, and Russia had signed an agreement concerning 
Armenia. According to that agreement Russia was to take over the 
three vilayets of Turkish Armenia, Erzeroum, Bitlis, and Van, while 
southern Armenia and Cilicia were to be put under the guardian- 
ship of France. One must be an Armenian in order to feel the depth and 
intensity of the bitterness and disappointment which filled the hearts of 
all the wandering Armenians from the Caucasus to Mesopotamia. Every 
Armenian asked himself or herself : Was this to be our recompense ? 

In those very days (September, 1916) one of the agents of the 
German government in Switzerland approached Dr. Zavrieff (one of 
the representatives of the Armenian Committee of that place) with 
the following proposal : 



34 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

"You Armenians made a great mistake when you joined your fate to 
that of the Allies. It is time for you to rectify your mistaken policy. 
Your dreams with regard to the historic Armenia are unrealizable. You 
may as well accustom yourselves to that fact, and before it is too late 
you will do better to join the fate of your people with the German poli- 
cies, and remove the remnants of the Armenian people to Mesopotamia, 
where the Germans will put at the disposal of the Armenians every 
means which will enable them to create for themselves a new and a more 
fortunate fatherland under their (German) immediate protection." 

In order to persuade his Armenian opponent, the German agent con- 
stantly reminded him of the agreement (between England, France and 
Russia), and especially of the hostile attitude of the Russians up to that 
time towards the Armenians. The news of this German proposal reached 
the Caucasus in December of the same year. It was made the subject of 
serious consultation among the Armenian leaders. The writer of these 
lines was present at those conferences, and his impression was this: 
Had there not been that superhuman adoration (so peculiarly Arme- 
nian) which every Armenian has for his ancestral home and recollec- 
tions so sanctified by blood, the German proposal would very likely have 
been accepted by the Armenians at that psychological moment when 
their hearts were overflowing with bitterness and disappointment to- 
ward the Russian government, — a member of the allied nations. The 
outcome of those conferences was that we decided to continue our for- 
mer policy toward the Entente, in spite of the base behavior of the Rus- 
sians towards us, and at the same time to invite the serious attention of 
our great Allies of the west to our hopeless situation. 

Role Played By the Armenians in The Caucasus 
After the Russian Collapse. 

This was the state of affairs when there came the crash of the Rus- 
sian revolution. The heart of every Armenian was greatly relieved, 
thinking that the greater part of their torments would come to an end. 
And in truth, during the first few months of the revolution, the tem- 
porary government of Kerensky made definite arrangements to rectify 
the unjust treatment of the Armenians by the government of the Czar. 
But events progressed in a precipitate manner. The demoralization of the 



EVENTS AFTER THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE 35 

Russian troops on all the fronts assumed greater proportions as the 
days went by. Foreseeing the danger which threatened the Caucasus, 
the Armenian National Organization of the Caucasus, as early as April, 
1917, sent to Petrograd on a special mission Dr. Zavrieff, already men- 
tioned, and the writer of these lines, in order to have them obtain per- 
mission to transfer to the Caucasus some 150,000 Armenian officers and 
men (scattered throughout the Russian army), by whose assistance 
the Armenians might be able to protect their own native land against 
the Turkish advance. Mr. Kerensky, who was well acquainted with the 
abnormal conditions reigning in the Caucasus, agreed to grant the re- 
quest of the Armenian delegates, but, on the other hand, for fear of 
receiving similar requests from the other races in case he granted an 
order favorable to the Armenians, he decided to fulfill our request un- 
officially, that is, without a general ordinance, to send the Armenian 
soldiers to the Caucasus gradually, in small groups, in order not to at- 
tract the attention of the other races. And he carried out this plan. 

But unfortunately, scarcely 35,000 Armenian soldiers had been able to 
reach the Caucasus by November, 1917, when Kerensky himself fell at 
the hands of the Bolsheviks, and there was created a chaotic condition 
the result of which was the final demobilization of the Russian army. 
During December, 1917, and January, 1918, the Russian army of 
250,000 men on the Caucasian front, without any orders, abandoned its 
positions and moved into the interior of Russia, leaving entirely unpro- 
tected a front about 970 kilometers (600 miles) in length, extending 
from the Black Sea to Persia. As soon as the Russian army disbanded, 
the 3,000,000 Tartar inhabitants of the Caucasus armed themselves and 
rose en masse. Toward the end of January last, the Tartars had cut the 
Baku-Tiflis railroad line as well as the Erivan-Joulfa line, and now began 
to raid and plunder the Armenian cities and villages, while behind, on 
the frontier, the regular Turkish army had commenced to advance in 
the first days of February. Against all these Turks and Tartars the 
Armenians had one army corps made up of some 35,000 regular troops 
under the command of General Nazarbekoff , and nearly 20,000 Armenian 
volunteers under the command of their experienced leaders. Armenia's 
only hope of assistance was their neighbors, the Georgians, who were as 
much interested in the protection of the Caucasus as the Armenians 



36 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

were, because the Turkish demands of the Brest-Litovsk treaty included 
definite portions of Georgia, as well as of Armenia; for example, the port 
of Batoum. And in fact, during the months of January and February 
they seemed quite inclined to help the Armenians, but when the Turks 
captured Batoum on April 15 and came as far as Usurgeti, the morale 
of the Georgians was completely broken, and they immediately sent a 
delegation to Berlin and put Georgia under German protection. From 
this time on the 2,000,000 Armenian inhabitants of the Caucasus re- 
mained entirely alone to face, on the one hand, the Turkish regular army 
of 100,000 men, and on the other hand, the armed forces of hundreds of 
thousands of Tartars. From the end of February the small number of 
Armenian forces commenced to retreat step by step before the superior 
Turkish forces, from Erzingan, Baiburt, Khenous, Mamakhatoun, Erze- 
roum, and Bayazid, and concentrated their forces on the former Rus- 
sian-Turkish frontier. Here commenced serious battles which arrested 
for quite a long time the advance of the Turkish troops. It took them 
until April 22 to arrive before the forts of Kars, where the first 
serious resistance of the Armenians took place. The fierce Turkish at- 
tack which continued for four days was easily repulsed by the Ar- 
menians, owing to the guns on the ramparts of Kars. 

During these events a temporary government of the Caucasus existed 
in Tiflis, composed of representatives of three Caucasian races — Georg- 
ian, Armenian, and Tartar. This Caucasian government was formed im- 
mediately after the coup d'etat of the Bolsheviks, and conducted Cau- 
casian affairs as an independent body. It refused to recognize the au- 
thority of the Bolshevik government, or the terms of the Brest- 
Litovsk treaty signed by its accredited delegates. The president of the 
government was Chekhenkeli, a Georgian. Immediately after the cap- 
ture of Batoum the Caucasian government opened peace negotiations 
with Turkish delegates in Batoum itself. The Turks, by their usual 
crafty tricks, persuaded the Georgian delegates that they would return 
Batoum to the Georgians if Kars surrendered without resistance. Feel- 
ing assured of this Turkish promise, the Georgian president of the 
Caucasian government, Chekhenkeli, on the night of April 25, without 
consultation with the other members of the government, telegraphed 
the commander of Kars that an armistice had been signed with the 
Turks on condition of surrendering Kars, and therefore to give up the 




MOURAT 

Who lead the volunteers at Erzingan after the Russian 
heroically in the fighting at Baku. 



collapse and died 



EVENTS AFTER THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE 37 

forts immediately and retreat as far as Arpa-Chai. On the following 
day the commander of the Armenian soldiers who were defending Kars 
delivered the fortress into the hands of the Turks and retreated to 
Alexandropol. Then it became known that Chekhenkeli had sent the fate- 
ful telegram on his own responsibility, but it was already too late. This 
event occasioned very strained relations between the Armenians and 
Georgians. Not long after, on the 26th of May, the Georgians, assured 
of German protection, declared in Tiflis the independence of Georgia. 
Thus the temporary Caucasian government dissolved. 

After the separation of the Georgians the Armenian National Council 
of the Caucasus declared Armenian independence, under the name 
of the Republic of Ararat, with Erivan as its capital. While the negotia- 
tions were going on in Batoum — always between the delegates of the 
Turks and the three Caucasian races comprising the Caucasian tem- 
porary government, — the Turkish armies, after the occupation of Kars, 
became more aggressive and commenced to advance toward Alexandro- 
pol and Karakilissa. Concentrating their forces around Karakilissa 
and Erivan, early in June, the Armenians in two fierce battles drove 
the Turks back almost to their frontier. In the battle of Karakilissa, 
which lasted four days, the Turks left 6,000 dead before the Armenian 
posts, and escaped to Alexandropol. When the Turks felt that their 
position in the face of the Armenian resistance was becoming more and 
more hopeless and that it would cost them dear to continue the fight, 
they immediately began to make concessions. Up to that time the 
Turks had not yet recognized the right of Russian Armenia to inde- 
pendence, their objection being that they only recognized in the Cau- 
casus Georgian and Tartar countries. But when they heard the news 
of the last military victory of the Armenians, on June 14, in Batoum, 
the Turkish delegates, together with the representatives of the Re- 
public of Ararat, signed the first terms of armistice, leaving the final 
peace signature to the congress of Constantinople, where the final 
negotiations were to take place. 

The delegates of the three nations of the Caucasus reached Constanti- 
nople on June 19. They were 32 in number. Among them were also the 
representatives of the Republic of Ararat, Mr. A. Khatissoff, the minis- 
ter of foreign affairs, and Mr. A. Aharonian, the president of the 
Armenian National Council. In that congress, which convened in 



38 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

presence of the delegates of the German and Austrian governments, the 
Turks signed peace treaties with each of the newly-formed Caucasian 
Republics. It is needless to say that those treaties had as much value 
as that which the Roumanian government was forced to sign a 
few months before by the central powers. And, as was expected, the 
Turks and the Germans rewarded the Georgians and the Tartars at the 
expense of the Armenians. They gave the greater part of the Armenian 
territories to the other two nations, and the remainder was claimed by 
Turkey, with the exception of 32,000 square kilometers (about 12,350 
square miles), with 700,000 Armenian inhabitants, which were left to 
the Republic of Ararat. According to these terms only one-third of 
the Armenians of the Caucasus are included within the Republic of 
Ararat, while the remaining 1,400,000 Armenians are left in territories 
allotted to the Tartars or the Georgians. 

That portion of the Armenians which inhabits the mountainous re- 
gions of Karabagh (which was assigned to the Tartars), up to this 
very day, October, 1918, resists the Turco-Tartar hordes and refuses 
at any price to be subjected to the unjust terms of the treaty of Constan- 
tinople, while beyond, the Armenians at Van, when their military forces 
realized that their retreat was cut off early last May, after being shel- 
tered for two whole months in Van, moved toward Persia, there joined 
the Christian Assyrians in the neighborhood of Urmia, repulsed for a 
long time the Turkish and Kurdish attacks, and only early in September 
succeeded in shattering the Turkish lines and thereby reached the city 
of Hamadan in Persia, where they entrusted to the care of the British 
forces the protection of about 40,000 Armenian and Assyrian refugees. 
In order to complete this picture of the heroic resistance of the Caucasian 
Armenians, let me say a few words more about the struggle at Baku. 

As already mentioned, early in May, 1917, through the efforts of the 
Armenian National Organization of the Caucasus, the Armenian soldiers 
and officers scattered throughout Russia were gradually brought to- 
gether and mobilized on the Caucasian front. With that purpose in view 
an Armenian Military Committee was formed in Petrograd with General 
Bagradouni as president. Bagradouni was one of the most brilliant 
young generals of the Russian army. He had received his military train- 
ing at the highest military academy of Petrograd, and, during Keren- 
sky's administration, was appointed Chief of the Staff of the military 



EVENTS AFTER THE RUSSIAN COLLAPSE 39 

forces at Petrograd. When the Bolsheviks assumed power they ordered 
him to take an oath of loyalty to the new government. General Bagra- 
douni refused to do so, and for that reason he was imprisoned, with many 
other high military officials. After remaining in prison two months, 
through repeated appeals by the Armenian National bodies, he was 
freed by the Bolsheviks on condition that he should immediately leave 
Petrograd. After his release from prison, General Bagradouni, accom- 
panied by the well known Armenian social worker, Mr. Rostom, with 
200 Armenian officers, left for the Caucasus to assume the duties of 
commander-in-chief of the newly-formed Armenian army. This group 
of Armenian officers reached Baku early in March, where it was 
forced to wait, for the simple reason that the Baku-Tiflis railroad line 
was already cut by the Tartars. During that same month of March 
from many parts of Russia a large number of Armenians gathered at 
Baku and waited to go to Erivan and Tiflis in response to the call issued 
by the Armenian National Council. Toward the end of March nearly 
110,000 Armenian soldiers had come together at Baku. 

By the 30th of March the news of German victories was spread 
throughout the Caucasus by the Turco-German agents. On the same 
day in Baku and other places appeared the following leaflets : 

"Awake, Turkish brothers ! 

"Protect your rights ; union with the Turks means life. 

"Unite, O Children of the Turks ! 

"Brothers of the noble Turkish nation, for hundreds of years our 
blood has flowed like water, our motherland has been ruined, and we 
have been under the heel of thousands of oppressors who have almost 
crushed us. We have forgotten our nation. We do not know to whom 
to appeal for help. 

"Countrymen, we consider ourselves free hereafter. Let us look into 
our conscience ! Let us not listen to the voice of plotters. We must not 
lose the way to freedom ; our freedom lies in union with the Turks. It is 
necessary for us to unite and put ourselves under the protection of the 
Turkish flag. 

"Forward, brothers ! Let us gather ourselves under the flag of union 
and stretch out our hands to our Turkish brothers. Long life to the gen- 
erous Turkish nation ! By these words we shall never again bear a for- 
eign yoke, the chains of servitude." 



40 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

And on the following day (March 31) from all sides of the Caucasus the 
armed hordes of Tartars attacked the Armenians. The leaders of the 
Tartars at Baku were convinced that they would easily disarm the 
Armenian soldiers, because they were somewhat shut up in Baku, but 
they were sadly mistaken in their calculations. After a bloody battle 
which lasted a whole week the Armenians remained masters of the city 
and its oil wells. They suffered a loss of nearly 2,500 killed, while the 
Tartars lost more than 10,000. The commander of the military forces 
of the Armenians was the same General Bagradouni, who, although he 
lost both of his legs during the fight, continued his duties until Sep- 
tember 14, when the Armenians and the small number of Englishmen 
who came to their assistance were forced to abandon Baku to the supe- 
rior forces of the Turco-Tartars, and retreat toward the city of Enzeli 
in the northern Caucasus. 

During these heroic struggles, which lasted five and a half months, 
the small Armenian garrison of Baku, together with a few thousand 
Russians, defended Baku and its oil wells against tens of thousands 
of Tartars, the Caucasian mountaineers, and more than one division of 
regular Turkish troops which had come to the assistance of the latter 
by way of Batoum. Time after time the Turkish troops made fierce at- 
tacks to capture the city, but each time they were repulsed with heavy 
losses by the gallant Armenian garrison. The Armenians had built their 
hopes on British assistance, since nothing was expected from the 
demoralized Russian army. But, unfortunately, the British were un- 
able to reach Baku with large forces from their Bagdad army. Never- 
theless, on August 5, they landed at Baku 2,800 men to help the Arme- 
nians. The arrival of this small British contingent caused great 
enthusiasm among the tired and exhausted defenders of the city. But 
meanwhile the Turks had received new forces from Batoum and re- 
newed their attacks. After a series of bloody battles the armed 
Armenian and British forces were forced to leave Baku on September 
14 and retreat toward Persia, taking with them nearly 10,000 refugees 
from the inhabitants of the city. As to the condition of those who were 
left behind, this much is certain; that on the day the city was occupied 
by the Turco-Tartars, nearly 20,000 Armenians were put to the sword, 
the greater portion of them being women and children. According to 
the news received from Persia, after that first terrible massacre, other 



ARMENIA'S CO-OPERATION ON OTHER FRONTS 41 

massacres likewise have taken place. The number of the losses is not 
known; but it may safely be surmised without any exaggeration that 
out of the entire 80,000 Armenian inhabitants of Baku, all those who 
were unable to leave the city in time were slaughtered by the revengeful 
Turks and Tartars. Thus ended the resistance of five months and a 
half by the Armenians at Baku against the Turco-Germans. 

The remnants of the retreating Armenian garrison of Baku, at the 
time of writing, are located in the Persian city of Enzeli, where, under 
the command of their heroic leader, General Bagradouni, they are re- 
cuperating before hastening to the aid of the Armenians in the eastern 
Caucasus, who, as already mentioned, up to this very day are resisting 
the forces of the Turco-Tartars in the mountains of Karabagh. 

Armenia's Co-operation With the Allies on Other Fronts. 

The Armenians, besides battling on the Caucasian front, where they 
have been fighting in their own native land, have co-operated unre- 
servedly with the Allies on far distant fronts, as for example on the 
French front. At the beginning of the war the young Armenian 
students living in France — about 900 in number — volunteered to serve 
in the French army for the defence of civilization and freedom. Today, 
scarcely 50 of them are alive; the majority of the 850 others gave 
their lives in 1916 in the immortal defence of Verdun. This small epi- 
sode in this universal drama will not be forgotten by either France or 
the Free Armenia of the future. Glory to the memory of those immortal 
heroes! Beyond, on another front of the war, by an extraordi- 
nary coincidence of fate, in the deadly blow which fell on the head of the 
criminal Ottoman Empire in the Holy Land, the sons of the sorrowful 
people whom it had ruthlessly slaughtered had their just share of active 
participation. And indeed, in General Allenby's victorious army, which 
saved Palestine and Syria from Turkish tyranny in September, 1918, 
by General Allenby's own testimony, the eight battalions of the Arme- 
nian volunteers (who took part in those battles under the French flag) 
were conspicuous for their bravery. In response to a congratulatory 
telegram from the chairman of the Armenian National Union of Egypt 
for the victories on the Palestine front, General Allenby said : "I thank 



42 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

you warmly for your congratulations, and am proud of the fact that 
your Armenian compatriots in the Oriental Legion took an active part 
in the fighting and shared in our victory." 

Conclusion. 

If we wish to condense all we have said in a few pages, we shall have 
the following picture : 

In 1914 both Turkey and Russia appealed to the Armenians by vari- 
ous promises of a future autonomous Armenia to secure their assistance 
in their respective military operations. Through their long and bitter 
experience the Armenians knew very well that the imperialistic govern- 
ments of both Turkey and of Russia were opposed to their national as- 
pirations and therefore those promises had no value whatever. But, 
realizing the universal significance of the present war, and considering 
the fact that justice was on the side of the Entente, the Armenians, in 
spite of their distrust of the Russian government, from the very begin- 
ning, unreservedly bound themselves to the allied cause. 

This decision of the Armenians cost them the sacrifice of more than 
1,000,000 men in Turkish Armenia, and complete devastation of their 
native land even in the first year of the war. 

In spite of this terrible blow, the Armenians did not lose their vigor, 
and, even though the autocratic Russian government, up to the time of 
the Revolution, created all sorts of obstacles to impede their activities, 
they still continued their assistance to the allied cause. In bringing about 
the failure of the three Turkish offensives in 1914 and 1915 the Arme- 
nians gave the allied cause important armed assistance, on both sides of 
the Turco-Russian frontier. 

After the Russian Revolution, when, the Russian military forces fled 
from the Caucasian front and left it unprotected from January, 1918, 
to the middle of the following September, the Armenians were the only 
people who resisted and delayed the Turco-German advance toward 
Baku. Moreover, the Armenians accomplished all this with their own 
forces, all alone, surrounded on all sides by hostile elements, without 
any means of communication with their great Allies of the West. As an 
evidence of this we mav mention the fact that during the last eight 



CONCLUSION 43 

months and a half the Armenians have received from the Allies only 
6,500,000 rubles ($3,250,000) of financial assistance, and the 2,800 
British soldiers who were too few and arrived too late to save Baku. 

Let us now look at the other side of the picture. 

Had the Armenians assumed an entirely opposite attitude from what 
they actually did ; in other words, had they bound their fate in 1914 to 
the Turco-German cause, just as the Bulgarians did in 1915, what would 
have been the trend of events in the Near East ? Here is a question to 
which, it is quite possible, our great Allies have had no time to give any 
consideration. But that very question was put before the Armenians 
in 1914, and with no light heart did they answer it by their decision to 
join the Allies. Each and every one of them had a clear presentiment of 
the terrible responsibility they assumed. Those millions of corpses of 
Armenian women and children which spotted the plains in the summer 
of 1915, rose like phantoms before our very eyes in the August of 1914 
when we decided to resist the wild Turkish revengefulness and its 
frightful outcome. Now, in October, 1918, when we are so close to 
the hour of the final victory, and feel quite safe and certain that the 
heavy and gloomy days of the summer of 1914 will never return, I 
shall permit myself to picture in a few words, before I finish, that which 
would have taken place if the Armenians had sided with the Germano- 
Turks in the Near East from the beginning of the war. 

First of all, those frightful Armenian massacres would not have taken 
place. On the contrary, the Turks and the Germans would have tried 
to win the sympathy of the Armenians in every possible way until the 
end of the war. 

On the other hand, so long as the Georgians and Tartars of the 
Caucasian peoples were only too eager to co-operate with the Germano- 
Turks, as the events of 1918 fully demonstrate, had the Armenians like- 
wise joined them in 1914, by cutting the railroads, the backbone of the 
Caucasian Russian army, all the Caucasian country would have slipped 
out of the hands of the Russians in a few weeks, and the Turco-Ger- 
mans would have reached Baku in the autumn of the same year. The 
Armenians, Georgians, and Tartars of the Caucasus, united, would have 
been able to form with the greatest ease an army of 700,000 men, by 
which they would have been able to defend the Caucasian mountain- 
ridge against the Russians. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish army would 



44 WHY ARMENIA SHOULD BE FREE 

have been available to advance immediately toward the interior of Asia 
and join the 18,000,000 Moslems of Asiatic Russia. We may safely say, 
neither Persia nor Afghanistan could have remained neutral on seeing 
such successful achievements by the Turks. 

In the course of such events Russia would have been compelled to 
remove the greater portion of her forces to the East and would not 
have been able to protect her Western frontiers as successfully as she 
did. Therefore, quite probably, the Russian collapse would have taken 
place in the summer of 1915, when the Germans occupied Russian 
Poland. On the other hand, Great Britain would have been obliged to 
appropriate the greater portion of her newly-formed land forces for 
the protection of India, and would have been unable to rush as great a 
force to the defence of heroic France as she actually did. Quite likely, 
under these conditions, neither Italy nor Roumania would have aban- 
doned her neutrality, and thus the war might have ended in 1915 or 
1916 with the victory of the central Powers, at least on land. 

It was as clear as day to the Armenians that a Germano-Turkish vic- 
tory could never satisfy their national aspirations. The most that those 
nations would have done for us would have been to grant nominal rights 
to the Armenia of their own choice. But it was very plain to us also 
that we should not have suffered such frightful human losses had we not 
sided with the Allies. We consciously chose this last alternative, 
namely : we tied our fate to the allied victory ; we exposed our very exist- 
ence to danger in order to realize the complete fulfillment of our na- 
tional ambition, that is, to see the re-establishment of the United His- 
toric Independent Armenia. 

With our modest means, we have fulfilled our duty in full measure in 
this great struggle in order to save civilization from an impending 
doom. Now it is for our great Allies to act. 

The day is not very far distant when, gathered around the great 
tribunal of justice, the representatives of all the nations of the 
globe — guilty or just — are to receive their punishment or reward from 
the hands of the four distinguished champions of democracy, President 
Wilson, Premiers Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Orlando. If the 
representatives present themselves in the order of seniority, the first in 
the rank will be the representative of the Armenian people — the aged 
Mother Armenia. Behold ! Into the Peace Congress Hall there enters 



CONCLUSION 45 

an old woman, bathed in blood, clothed in rags, her face covered with 
wrinkles 3,000 years old, and completely exhausted. With her thought- 
ful eyes the venerable Mother Armenia will survey the countenances of 
all those present, and thus will she address the great figures of the 
world : 

"Century after century my sons took part in all the strifes waged to 
safeguard justice and the freedom of suffering humanity. Three thou- 
sand years ago my sons struggled for seven hundred years against the 
despotism of Babylon and Nineveh, which eventually collapsed under the 
load of their own crimes. Fifteen centuries ago the Armenians resisted 
for five hundred years the persecutions of the mighty Persian Empire 
to preserve their Christian faith. Since the eighth century my sons 
have been the vanguard of Christian civilization in the East against 
Moslem invasions threatening for a while the very existence of all 
Europe. If you doubt my statements, ask the sacred mountain of 
Ararat; he will relate to you how all the nations and empires, which 
attempted to possess by criminal means the indisputable inheritance of 
my sons, have received their just punishment. 

"Let us not go very far. Here, before you, stand the representatives 
of those three nations which tried to destroy my sons before your very 
eyes, in order to rule those parts of our ancestral lands, so sanctified 
by blood, known as Armenia. Look at this Turk ; it was he who wished 
to wipe the very name of Armenia off the face of the map; but today, 
foiled in his attempt, he stands there like a criminal awaiting his sen- 
tence. And where is today the Czar of Russia, who planned to occupy 
Armenia without the Armenians, — the representative of that Empire 
before which the world trembled. And what has remained of the policies 
of the German Empire, in whose hands is the Bagdad railroad now, 
built at the cost of the blood of hundreds of thousands of Armenian 
women and children? Thus, those three modern malevolent empires, 
which tried to attain happiness through the blood of my sons, have re- 
ceived their just punishment. 

"Such will be the fate in the future of all those who shall attempt 
similar crimes against Armenia. This is the message, gentlemen, 
handed down to us through three thousand years of history. 

"I have nothing more to add. I await your verdict with confidence." 




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